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Kind, well-meaning relative bought the Oxford Reading Tree box setfor DD (Aged 5.1)....but I am unsure how to sync this ox in with Jolly Phonics

100 replies

Greythorne · 10/01/2012 07:48

DD is learning to read in English (we are in France) and doing pretty well with learning sounds, blending and reading Songbird books. We are following Jolly Phonics and it makes compkete sense.

However, the ORT set is not decodeable....so even the level one books have words like 'saw' and 'made' which DD cannot yet decode.

She is keen to get on with the ORT books but stumbles and gets frustrated even with the level 1 books.

I am te pted to hide them at the back of the cupboard and focus solely on Jolly Phonics and Songbirds but I keep hearing how ORT is standard in UK schools.

Any advice?

OP posts:
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jubilee10 · 12/01/2012 15:55

Ds3 5.6 is in P1 (Scotland) he is doing Jolly Phonics but his reading books are Biff and Chip. I have bought some Ruth Miskin Phonics books but have not been using them since he went to school as I thought the schools method must be the best one. Can any teachers or anyone else suggest what my next move should be? Should I buy some songbirds? He can certainly recognise all the words in the books but seems to get quite bored with them.

Mashabell · 12/01/2012 16:00

^She, quay, see - all to do with the word 'seaside' ??
I don't get your point.^

My point, Kerryblue, is that phonics is of no help at all for coping with the tricky parts of English spelling, such as the different, totally illogical spellings for the stressed /ee/ sound.

Learning that the /ee/ sound has two main spellings and four other fairly common ones - and and , , and (sea, see, here, thief, weird, machine) and a few assorted oddities (people, me, ski, key, quay) - does not help with deciding how to spell that sound in particular words. They have to be memorised word by word.

Because the sound occurs in at least 459 common words, learning to spell them all 'correctly' takes some time.

The number of words is in fact only 410, but 49 of them have two spellings:
Bee/be, beech/beach, been/bean, beet/beat, breech/breach, cheep/cheap, creek/creak, deer/dear, discreet/discrete, eerie/eyrie, eve/eaves, feet/feat, flee/flea, freeze/frieze, jeans/genes, Greece/grease, heel/heal, hear/here, key/quay, leech/leach, leek/leak, meet/meat, need/knead, pee/pea, peace/piece, peek/peak, peel/peal, peer/pier, reed/read, reek/wreak, reel/real, sealing/ceiling, seamen/semen, see/sea , seem/seam, seen/scene, serial/cereal, sheer/shear, sheikh/chic, steel/steal, sweet/suite, tee/tea, teem/team, wee/we, week/weak, wheel/weal

geezer/geyser, leaver/lever.

There is of course no real need to have more than one spelling for any word that has several meanings (mean, lean...). We even cope with some different words sharing one spelling (read, lead, row...).
But why let children learn to read and write easily when there are ways of making it much harder?

Beyond the basic, initial stage of learning to read and write, phonics is useless in English.

maizieD · 12/01/2012 16:26

U probably teach the different spellings with little groups of words (see green tree..., sea beach tea). But that's not phonics. It's ordinary, word by word rote-learning of spellings.

Phonics, masha, is teaching how the sounds of a language are represented by a symbol or symbols in order to represent the spoken word in writing.

Which is precisely what is happening when children have words grouped according to the way that the 'common' sound in them is spelled.

Incidentally, there is nothing at all wrong with 'rote learning'. That is how 'knowledge' becomes fixed in the brain.

mrz · 12/01/2012 17:50

But why let children learn to read and write easily when there are ways of making it much harder?

You are the one who keeps telling everyone how hard it is

mrz · 12/01/2012 18:48

Greythorne I like Sounds & Letters Floppy's Phonics for complete beginners and
www.mumsnet.com/learning/ebooks Phonics Bugs but there are lots of good early phonic readers available now www.oxfordowl.co.uk/Library/Index/?AgeGroup=3&BookType=Phonics

strictlovingmum · 12/01/2012 18:57

Greythorne, my DD was given ORT last term of YR last year, after two terms of only reading songbirds and jolly phonics, gaining a sound knowledge of phonics and then switching to ORT was not a biggy, IMO all the words DD came across that she couldn't read outright she sounded them out/decoded it and as we were ploughing through ORT in my layman opinion I have realised there are very few words in those books that can't be sounded out.
Ones that can not be sounded out are the high frequency words, which have to be learnt by sight and recognised automatically, teachers correct me if I am wrong. Also IMO if a child has a sound knowledge of digraphs and applies them in reading and writing (a,ai,ay,o,oa, oo) and split digraphs(a-e,i-e,o-e) etc. decoding ORT or any "look and say" reading scheme should not confuse the child, although IMO I don't know why schools insist on using non phonic reading scheme.Confused

mrz · 12/01/2012 19:14

High Frequency Words can be sounded out!!!
a
am
an
as
at
and
big
but
can
dad
dog ... are all in the forst 100 HFW

mrz · 12/01/2012 19:15

Ones that can not be sounded out are the high frequency words, which have to be learnt by sight and recognised automatically, teachers correct me if I am wrong .
Sorry but you are wrong

mrz · 12/01/2012 19:20

There are many words in the early ORT books that children can't decode when they are first learning to read which is why they were taught to look at pictures and the use initial sounds to "work out" (guess) the word. I wouldn't expect any beginner reader in reception to be able to read ORT without an adult supplying a high number of words.

strictlovingmum · 12/01/2012 19:25

Thank you mrzSmile
So if almost all of it is decodable, then it shouldn't matter which reading scheme is operational in schools, if children are taught phonics in right way, they will be able to decode anything?

strictlovingmum · 12/01/2012 19:27

So does ORT has any place in reception reading or not?
if not, Why is it there?

Greythorne · 12/01/2012 19:30

But not right from the get go.
If they learn consonant - vowel - consonant words first, there are some Songbird books they can read right away:

"Tim and his dog dig. Tim digs up a big tin and a lid."

But in level 1 Biff and Chip books, there are words like blew and snow and nose....decodeable in due course, but not right away.

And conversely, By the time the child has worked through all the phonemes and can recognise, sound, blend them all, the ORT level one books are too silly and lacking in story, IMHO.

OP posts:
mrz · 12/01/2012 19:33

if children are taught phonics in right way, they will be able to decode anything? not in reception because they haven't been taught all the alternative ways sounds can be written but once they know the alternatives they will be able to So does ORT has any place in reception reading or not? short answer ...not really Why is it there? because schools can't afford to replace it so they stick with topping up an out of date scheme.

gaelicsheep · 12/01/2012 20:57

Masha Bell, that's rubbish. It doesn't matter how you learned to read, if somebody reads out a word that has multiple possible spellings and doesn't give you a context you will always have to guess which way it is spelt. (Which is why it wouldn't happen incidentally unless one variant was part of a spelling list). I don't really understand your point at all? With phonics they at least have some grasp of the possibilities rather than putting together random groups of letters that look like they might be right.

gaelicsheep · 12/01/2012 21:03

Greythorne - how funny, I read that Songbirds book with DS this evening. That was following reading about Kipper's Laces - which despite vowing never to do I found I had to as DS had been challenged about the lack of signature in his spelling book. Lo and behold, when he got stuck on a word I found him peering hard at the picture for clues and then guessing.

Kipper's Laces states that it is practising the words "a, and, at, dad, he, no, said, was" and DS can read all those perfectly. The trouble is that the story is in all the other words. This is his problem - when he reads any book (apart from early phonics) he can only read the filler words and I have to fill in the story. That is rubbish and very discouraging for him.

I have a meeting with DS's teacher next week at which I will bring up my serious concerns about their core "reading" scheme. My DS is also in Scottish P1 (I would now add "unfortunately").

gaelicsheep · 12/01/2012 21:04

For spelling book read "reading diary"

Mashabell · 13/01/2012 07:14

High Frequency Words can be sounded out!!!

Nearly two thirds can. But one third contains some tricky letters.

193 of the 300 most HF are regular for reading
a, am, an, and, as, at, back, bad, can, cat, dad, gran, grandad, had, has, hat, man, rabbit, ran, sat, than, that, that?s,

came, gave, made, make, place, take, same, name, baby,
away, day, may, play, say, way,

car, dark, garden, hard, park,

bed, best, better, eggs, end, fell, get, help, let, let?s, next, red, tell, them, then, very, well, went, yes, her,

been, feet, green, keep, need, queen, see, sleep, three, tree, trees,

each, eat, sea, tea, please, even, here, these,

big, children, did, didn?t, different, fish, him, his, if, in, is, it, it?s, its, king, little, miss, still, thing, things, think, this, will, wind, wish, with,

birds, first, girl,

inside, like, liked, time, I, I?ve, cried, night, right, by, fly, my,

box, dog, fox, from, got, hot, long, lots, no, not, of, off, on, so, stop, stopped, top, floppy, across, along,

cold, old, told,
go, going, home, over, clothes,
or, for, horse, morning,

found, house, mouse, our, out, round, around, shouted, about, boy,

but, duck, fun, just, much, mum, must, run, sun, under, up, us, jumped, suddenly,

use,

when, which, while, why,

their, they, new, again, air, because, began, boat, window.

The following are trickier in the first 100:
the, he, be, we, me, she,
of, to, was, want, all, call, one, said,
you, by, my, only, come, could, do, down, into, look, now, other, right, some, there, two, when, what, where, which, who, your,
are, have, before, more, were.

In the next 200:
another, any, many, saw, water, small, laughed,
bear, great, head, ready,
(ever, never,) every, eyes,
find, friends, giant, I?ll, I?m, key, live, river,
people, pulled, put, thought, through, were, work, would,

coming, everyone, gone,
most, mother, oh, once,
grow, how, know, snow, town, window,
book, food, good, room, school, soon, too, took, door,
Mr Mrs magic,
(and depending on accent)
after, asked, can?t, fast, last, plants.

mrz · 13/01/2012 07:39

They might contain tricky graphemes masha but that doesn't mean they can't be sounded out if the child is taught the sound represented by the "tricky" bit ... which is what the government guidance tells teachers to do.

Mashabell · 13/01/2012 08:37

No Mrz.
They definitely cannot be sounded out completely, the way 'a fat cat sat on a mat' or 'shout out loud' can.

Children can be taught how they can try to work them out, but not simply to sound out.

That's why beginning readers learn to read the regularly spelt words easily and quickly, but are often tripped up by the tricky ones.

Learning to read the tricky words takes much more time and effort because they cannot be learned by mere sounding out and blending (i.e. simple phonics). They are much harder to learn, but until children can read those as well, they cannot really read.

So far there is no real evidence that learning the tricky words by teaching the different sounds which English vowels can have is any more effective than simply teaching them as sightwords.

Teaching such words as sightwords is never without some phonics anyway. Most consonants are stable. (Totally insane spellings like 'quay' are pretty rare.) The tricky parts of words are predominantly the vowels.

Bonsoir · 13/01/2012 09:27

mashabell - my DD, who learned to read quite recently, learned to sound out lots of the words on your "next 200" list with no problems at all. You create difficulties because your starting point for learning to read is the grapheme, whereas children learning to read using synthetic phonics use the phoneme as their starting point.

You are projecting the difficulties encountered by non-native speakers of English learning to both speak and read English from the written word onto native speakers of English, who themselves already speak English fluently when they start to learn to read.

mrz · 13/01/2012 17:07

Masha tell that to the four year olds who can sound them out with no problem whatsoever!

Feenie · 13/01/2012 17:50

Masha, what exactly did you teach at secondary school? Because I want to tell you, through no experience whatsoever, how impossible it is.

maizieD · 14/01/2012 00:08

I think she taught English, Feenie.Sad

Feenie · 14/01/2012 10:25

Shock Shock

mrz · 14/01/2012 10:40

To quote masha's web site
In 1970 she graduated in Philosophy and Psychology at Exeter University and then went on to become a secondary school teacher of English and modern languages in Dorset.

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